Classics and the Western Canon discussion

"I now must change
those notes to Tragic, foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience..."

We now come to that event which, for both Jews and Christians, changed everything.

But before we get to the event, there is a lot more discussion of Eden, and many classical references. What is all this doing?

And once we do get to the event, Milton fleshes out much more than does the Bible the interactions between Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. How realistically do these come across? What do you think of Eve's reasons for not wanting to stay with Adam?

Is there a parallel between Eve's disobedience of Adam in going off alone against his wishes and her and Adam's disobedience of God?

And one other perhaps interesting parallel that I made a marginal note of: at 265 Milton has Adam say
"leave not the faithful side
That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects.
The Wife..."

The "that gave the being" makes me think that this is not only a husband-wife relationship, but also parent-child. Is Eve in a dual emotional and physical relationship here of being both offspring and spouse? Is Adam acting parentally in letting her go off on her own at he time he knows that there is danger out there?

Lots to discuss here!

Adam does not entertain even for a moment the idea of not joining Eve in eating the apple.

. . . som cursed fraud
Of Enemie hath beguil'd thee, yet unknown, [ 905 :]
And mee with thee hath ruind, for with thee
Certain my resolution is to Die;

Are they so much "one flesh" that that is unthinkable? If so, only before the Fall--Eve thinks about keeping the apple to herself, and shares it with Adam only because she can't stand the thought of him going off with another woman:

. . . but what if God have seen
And Death ensue? then I shall be no more,
And Adam wedded to another Eve,
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;
A death to think. Confirm'd then I resolve, [ 830 :]
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:

Amanda, I know you've been frustrated with some of Rogers' lectures on PL, but the one on Book IX has some really interesting discussion on Eve. In fact I think he has a bit of a crush on her :) Take a look if you get the chance.

In Milton's account, I think Adam's guilt is actually greater than Eve's. Eve is beguiled into thinking that the fruit will do her good as it supposedly did the serpent. She does not consider that he may be lying--and since she's never met a liar, who can blame her? But Adam knows for certain that eating the apple is wrong and will do him harm, but he eats anyway.

Roger wrote: "In Milton's account, I think Adam's guilt is actually greater than Eve's. Eve is beguiled into thinking that the fruit will do her good as it supposedly did the serpent. She does not consider tha..."

Adam finds Eve more important to him than God's will:

The bond of Nature draw me to my own;
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed; we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

As you say, he knows perfectly well what he is doing, he knows that it is against God's will and he does it anyway out of love for Eve. This act is really the only exercise of free will we have seen up to this point. Eve's been set up. Adam does this with his eyes wide open.

I don't know about anyone else, but I found it hard to sleep after reading Book 9.

After all the warnings, the temptation and the lengthy rumination, the actual eating of the fruit is described in two wonderful lines at 780.

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:

I love details:

the alliteration of the first two words if read aloud sounds like the hiss of a serpent;

the two caesuras in the second line make us hear the sound of the fruit being pulled from the vine and the crunch of the fatal bite;

the preponderance of single syllable words drives the line (and Eve's determination to act) forward.

Zeke wrote: "After all the warnings, the temptation and the lengthy rumination, the actual eating of the fruit is described in two wonderful lines at 780.

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching t..."

Nice, Zeke. Thanks for pointing these out.

Zeke wrote: "After all the warnings, the temptation and the lengthy rumination, the actual eating of the fruit is described in two wonderful lines at 780.

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:

I love details: "

I took note of those lines, but hadn't stopped to puzzle out why they worked so well. A lesser poet might have overworked the moment. Milton allowed simplicity and cadence to punctuate it instead. Thank you, Zeke! That was nicely done.

Zeke wrote: "After all the warnings, the temptation and the lengthy rumination, the actual eating of the fruit is described in two wonderful lines at 780.

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching t..."

Beautiful observation, and well put.

Aranthe wrote: "Zeke wrote: "After all the warnings, the temptation and the lengthy rumination, the actual eating of the fruit is described in two wonderful lines at 780.

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
For..."

Ditto!

I'm with Roger that Adam is more culpable than Eve.

An interesting facet of this Book is the way it begins with Eve asserting herself in proposing to work alone. And it ends with her pushing back hard at Adam's sexist accusations.

"Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours..."

Gotta love that Milton fellow; never misses an opportunity to drop in a pun!

Can someone explain a line to me? At 948, Milton writes:

Fickle their State whom God
Most Favors, who can please him long; Mee first
He ruind, now Mankind; whom will he next?

What does he mean, "me first he ruined"? How did he first ruin Adam? Is there some ruin before Eve eats the apple? Or is Eve so insignificant that her eating isn't ruin, but it's all about him and how her eating ruined him? Milton could perfectly easily have made that line "Wee first..." But he didn't. It's Me. And I'm having trouble making sense of that.

Amanda wrote: "A few thoughts: Milton frames the Fall not as the gaining of knowledge through eating the fruit, but as the loss of reason through eating the fruit:"

That's a good point to emphasize. The nature of the fall and what it really meant for mankind is one of the things many Christian thinkers argue about, but Milton puts his claim in for Appetite now holding sway over Reason. (Though really, how much reasoning have Adam and Eve done up to this point, and how much have they really needed to do?)

But a possibly interesting thought: Extracting from your post a portion of the passage you cited, "shook sore / Thir inward State of Mind, calm Region once," is the state of meditation, which seeks to restore that state of inward calm, a form of attempted return to Eden?

Amanda wrote: "Also, the sexism, oh Lordy...for one thing, Milton completely ignores the Biblical account of Eve and Adam's interaction after Eve eats the fruit:"

Well, I suppose one could argue that the Bible compresses time, so that he came up to her later and was with her when she fed him some, but not with her when she first ate. But I agree that the simpler view of the passage is that he was there, and this is the view taken by most artists of the passage who generally show Adam, Eve, and the serpent there all together.

But clearly, as we have said before, Milton holds throughout the poem, at least so far, the view of woman as the subservient (yet also disobedient!), weaker sex, more easily beguiled by honeyed words.

Amanda wrote: "It seems that part of the fall, for women at least, is emotional desperation? "

Isn't that consistent with the loss of reason?

Roger wrote: "In Milton's account, I think Adam's guilt is actually greater than Eve's. Eve is beguiled into thinking that the fruit will do her good as it supposedly did the serpent. She does not consider tha..."

I think she knew as much as he did that it was a wrong thing to do, so she's not less guilty in that regard, as I see it. But she was beguiled by words, he was beguiled by love -- and pre-eating love, so it was true love, not lust. Which is the greater sin?

Zeke wrote: "After all the warnings, the temptation and the lengthy rumination, the actual eating of the fruit is described in two wonderful lines at 780."

Nice analysis. Isn't it too bad that we don't have the time to examine all the great lines in the poem more carefully? My reading is very slow since I keep stopping to savor lines and phrases and Milton's ways of putting things.

Everyman: Can someone explain a line to me? At 948, Milton writes:

Fickle their State whom God
Most Favors, who can please him long; Mee first
He ruind, now Mankind; whom will he next?

I believe that Adam is imagining what Satan would say if God punishes him and Eve by death. A line above he leads into the quote by saying:

...lest the Adversary
Triumph and say 'Fickle their state...

The "me" referred to is Satan not Adam.

Gosh Everyman, based on what you assert at message 18, I will be very interested in your reading of Satan's temptation. Are you suggesting that Eve has the skills needed to be able to refute his arguments? To my eye, her Creator hasn't endowed her with any of the armament she would have needed to see through Satan.

All He's done is exhort and threaten. Would you really expect a child not to reach into an unattended cookie jar?

It seems that the Fall is the result of not one great error, but a series of smaller errors, each compounding the error of the previous:

- God tells Raphael to warn Adam and Eve that Satan will come to them with "deceit and lies," but as far as I can see Raphael fails to warn about lies and disguises--he just keeps harping on obedience, then gets distracted into monologuing about Creation.
- Eve desires to go off by herself
- Adam allows her to go, violating his repsonsibility to protect her
- Eve believes the serpent, and eats
- Adam will not let obedience separate him from Eve

Zeke wrote: "Gosh Everyman, based on what you assert at message 18, I will be very interested in your reading of Satan's temptation. Are you suggesting that Eve has the skills needed to be able to refute his arguments? To my eye, her Creator hasn't endowed her with any of the armament she would have needed to see through Satan."

But God said that he gave Adam and Eve the ability to resist. Are you doubting God? Or, more accurately, are you doubting that Milton has properly represented what God said?

[Yeah, a little tongue in cheek there.:]

But seriously, Milton seems to have believed that Eve had the ability to resist.

And after all, if she didn't, God was just playing a trick on Adam and Eve. It changes the situation entirely from "I gave them the ability to resist, but I'm aware they won't use that ability and will give in" to "I made up a test that I knew they would inevitably fail, I never gave them a chance." Surely Milton didn't believe the latter, did he? (If he did, how can he possibly justify the ways of God to man?)

Roger wrote: "It seems that the Fall is the result of not one great error, but a series of smaller errors, each compounding the error of the previous..."

Good summary. Basically, everybody fails everybody else they were supposed to protect or obey.

Roger wrote: "It seems that the Fall is the result of not one great error, but a series of smaller errors, each compounding the error of the previous."

Was it an error also for God to make Hell escapable? Or for Him not to make Eden Satan-proof? Presumably he could have done either of these things, but didn't. Should these be considered errors in the chain of errors also?

Everyman wrote: "Roger wrote: "It seems that the Fall is the result of not one great error, but a series of smaller errors, each compounding the error of the previous."

Was it an error also for God to make Hell es..."

Presumably, not even Milton would say that God errs. God certainly allows created beings to muck up His creation; we see that in everyday life. Could He have made things so that people could sin and that sin have no effect on anyone but themselves? Presumably not, since He didn't. Or perhaps He could, but that would leave us all in a sorry and poor isolation; we're all better off able to interact with each other, for better or for worse.

Roger wrote: "Everyman wrote: "Roger wrote: "It seems that the Fall is the result of not one great error, but a series of smaller errors, each compounding the error of the previous."

Was it an error also for ..."

When we get to the discussion of the full work, we may want to have a discussion on what Milton thinks God's purpose was for man, and whether Milton has adequately justified God's way of going about it. I'm just laying out that as an idea to discuss as we get to the end of the poem so anybody who wants to can think on it; not suggesting that it's time to start that discussion yet.

@Everyman with a nod towards Roger's recent comments too.

Your points in 23 are well taken. And, as with allowing the escape from Hell that Roger referenced, I don't think God is capricious or toying with his creations. (Well, I would read such a critique with interest and sympathy, but I am not going to attempt it.)

I think the answer is that He does know all these things yet allows them in order to demonstrate that man on his own is incapable of using reason successfully. And, more importantly, because this whole affair is designed to lead to the second coming of Christ and the incorporation of all believers into Heaven.

Seems a bit like kabuki to me, but not, I assume to Milton.

Freedom is just a theory until someone actually exercises it. Clearly God does not want a puppet race to worship him without making the choice to do so. Nor does Adam want Eve to love and obey him out of compulsion.

Wouldst thou approve thy constancie, approve
First thy obedience; th' other who can know,
Not seeing thee attempted, who attest?
But if thou think, trial unsought may finde [ 370 :]
Us both securer then thus warnd thou seemst,
Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more;
Go in thy native innocence, relie
On what thou hast of vertue, summon all,
For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.

But without sin, without rebellion, without the exercise of free will, what sort of story would there be? And would that story be at all reflective of human experience?

Amanda wrote: "I don't think of them as children. They seem like pretty reasonable adults- just reasonable adults in control of their appetites because they don't even really know what those are yet."

Funny you should say that. I was thinking about PL as I was trying to go to sleep, and it occurred to me that Eve is really a lot like a fairly sheltered teenager wanting to break out of her shell.

Dad has sent her off with her brother to look after her. But after awhile she gets tired of hanging around her bro, and wants to try a bit of freedom out on her own. Reluctantly he lets her. Whereupon she runs into the slick fast-talking bad guy, who offers her a beer to try. No, she says, Dad always told me not to touch that stuff, it's bad for you. But heck, chickie, he says to her, look at me. I drink, and not only am I healthy and happy, but I see things and understand things in ways I never did. You're dad is just trying to keep you from understanding things the way he can, from being an adult.

So he talks her into doing what she still knows in the bottom of her heart she shouldn't. And we know what it does to her inhibitions!

Not an exact parallel, of course, but I think maybe psychologically fairly close.

Amanda wrote: "ETA: I mean he's toeing the church of his time's line about women- most modern churches aren't that dense anymore, though there are still some crazies out there, I'm sure. "

And yet he was considered a quite enlightened thinker for his time -- look at his writing on free speech and divorce.

Everyman wrote: "Amanda wrote: "I don't think of them as children. They seem like pretty reasonable adults- just reasonable adults in control of their appetites because they don't even really know what those are ye..."

I love this analogy!

Everyman wrote: "Amanda wrote: "I don't think of them as children. They seem like pretty reasonable adults- just reasonable adults in control of their appetites because they don't even really know what those are ye..."

Spoken like a father.

Amanda wrote: "I don't know, I think Milton is just toeing the (old) church's line about women by presenting Eve as a secondary temptress. I know he's not Catholic, but that's definitely not a strictly Catholic idea. It's sort of like the idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute- it's nowhere in the Bible, but the church sewed that seed for so long that people just accepted it as true (it was some Pope's creation, but I don't remember which one). They couldn't stand to have a powerful woman who was wealthy of her own volition be a follower of Jesus. And I don't think Milton would have liked an Adam who fell because he was simply disobedient- Adam is a victim who nobly loves the temptress Eve:"

I always hate to argue about Biblical statements, but when you are twisting the story so eloquently, though you are welcome to your conclusion that the Catholic Church bashes women, of course, I cannot help but comment.
Mary Magdalene is explained sketchily in the Bible, but it is stated quite clearly in Luke that Mary Magdalene had seven demons of which she was rid. Now I hate to argue this in front of the boys, but I have searched for the meanings of sins as far as I can, especially of women of the period and I am loathe to imagine that having seven demons did NOT include at least one concerning sex.. I have imagined that she was epileptic, that she was an extremely bad cook, had warts on her face, was lame and misshapen, but I believe that it is highly likely that she was a prostitute... and for all I know a dominatrix. The more important point is that she was CURED of these and therefore was raised up by that same Catholic Church you continuously bash. This is hardly a case of the Catholic Church keeping a woman “in her place” as you suggest.
Further it is the women, one of whom was Mary Magdalene, who went to Christ’s tomb while the men had given up. They return with the first message that Christ was alive… and the men wouldn’t believe. In my eyes this raises the women significantly in a holy way. Women throughout the New Testament are given greater equality than ever before, sharing the burdens and joys equally with men. Paul has been unfairly attacked for denigrating women by rabid women under the guise of some misguided feminism. Paul himself did more than almost anyone else to raise women to a position of equality with men under Christianity. This is a person who wrote a majority of the New Testament. In the NT, Jesus becomes the new Adam (1 Cor. 15:45) and his mother Mary becomes the new Eve. The latter is a particularly Catholic issue but not one always denied by Protestants. Agains this is not a case of Catholics bashing women.

As to Milton’s position on women, he has made it pretty clear that he finds us somewhat vain creatures, though clearly, by his portrayal of Eve, not naturally lacking in perspicacity. Frankly I don’t find either the Bible or Milton all that sexist: How can we compare the 17th century woman to a modern one? At least I can openly admit that I am the one with twenty pairs of shoes and the drawers of makeup rather than my husband. I am also the only one in the house who cries during movies ... and that doesn’t make me less intelligent or less able to do certain things. I do remain (unfortunately) the only one who can bear children and that makes me different. Maybe the whole issue is that of women taking care of the children and taking care of the house while they are at it, as outmoded (by only 50 years or so) as that may seem. I tend to believe that women complement men but that may be old-fashioned to many also.
Milton also suggests that married couples ought to support one another against such temptations. In fact I suggest that the account in Genesis as well as Milton’s interpretation thereof suggests that Eve is the stronger of the two. Consider that Satan had to use all of his wiles to convince Eve while Adam merely takes the apple and eats it. It is also important to read the Genesis account that man’s labor shall be frustrated and that he is to rule his wife who will bring forth children in pain and suffering yet desire her husband. (Genesis 3:16-19) 1
Additionally, Timothy 2:14 states: And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
I can tell you without any necessary detail, that the second part is absolutely correct. I may not have been able to do any better against Satan but I still have a hard time with the curse thing.

Okay, you've each had your say on Mary Magdalene, who isn't in Paradise Lost, so let's leave it there, please. Thanks.

Milton's attitude toward woman is of course fully in play, indeed is very important to the poem and particularly to this book, and I'm not trying to stifle constructive discussion of that. Quite the opposite.

I would say his sexism is based more on the ideas of his culture.

Dianna wrote: "I would say his sexism is based more on the ideas of his culture."

I would agree with that. Which I think includes, or maybe it's better to say was directed by, the church's view of women as it was in his lifetime. But I'm not an expert in the church view of women in that era, so I'm working more from the "everybody knows" principle than true knowledge.

What is interesting to me is that Eve is not happy playing her designated role even before she meets Satan and takes the fruit. She is not pleased with how the garden grows "luxurious by restraint" and has better ideas for how their labor should be employed. Adam is persuaded by her argument and agrees to part from her.

Moreover, her role as "temptress" is one that subverts the notion that she is inferior to Adam. Adam makes his eating of the fruit sound like a sacrifice to his love for Eve, but he may also have in mind Eve's implication that she will now be greater than him:

Thou therefore also taste, that equal Lot
May joyne us, equal Joy, as equal Love;
Least thou not tasting, different degree
Disjoyne us, and I then too late renounce
Deitie for thee, when Fate will not permit.

Based on these things, I'm not so sure that Milton is as much of a sexist as he is made out to be. Eve is the more powerful one in this episode, whether for good or evil.

Thomas wrote: "Adam makes his eating of the fruit sound like a sacrifice to his love for Eve, but he may also have in mind Eve's implication that she will now be greater than him:"

I do think this is part of it. She may die and he may not, but she will have greater knowledge for the time they have together, which will significantly change their dynamic, not to his benefit.

Amanda wrote:

Adam and Eve lose their ability to reason and instead are taken over by negative, evil emotions. Their knowledge of good and evil seem to be experiencing evil and mourning the loss of the good. This is a pretty big contrast to the more intellectually knowledgeable image some people have of Adam and Eve after the fall- for Milton, it had nothing to do with seeking knowledge, and everything to do with the loss of reason- to him, the ultimate good?

Very good, Amanda. I think many biblical scholars would agree with Milton. I have often wondered how fast science would have progressed had it not been for the Fall. Some sciences, such as analgesics, wouldn't be needed, of course, but I imagine we would very early know much more about the universe than we now do.

Amanda wrote: Also, the sexism, oh Lordy...for one thing, Milton completely ignores the Biblical account of Eve and Adam's interaction after Eve eats the fruit:

"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." -Genesis 3:6

Adam was standing right there the whole time, and did nothing to stop Eve. Perhaps he was just as swayed by the false reasoning of the serpent? Why did Milton find it necessary to separate the couple- so he could have Eve fall alone and make Adam the more noble character, sinning out of love for Eve? Just a thought.

I'm not so sure that Adam was present at first. Here is the King James translation of verse 6:

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."

And the new version of Genesis from the Hebrew:

"And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and that it was lust to the eyes and the tree was lovely to look at, and she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave to her man, and he ate." --Genesis, Translation and Commentary by Robert Alter

Roger wrote: "I don't know about anyone else, but I found it hard to sleep after reading Book 9."

It's heartbreaking, isn't it?

Zeke wrote: After all the warnings, the temptation and the lengthy rumination, the actual eating of the fruit is described in two wonderful lines at 780.

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:

I love details:

the alliteration of the first two words if read aloud sounds like the hiss of a serpent;

the two caesuras in the second line make us hear the sound of the fruit being pulled from the vine and the crunch of the fatal bite;

the preponderance of single syllable words drives the line (and Eve's determination to act) forward.

That's beautiful, Zeke.

Everyman wrote: Can someone explain a line to me? At 948, Milton writes:

Fickle their State whom God
Most Favors, who can please him long; Mee first
He ruind, now Mankind; whom will he next?

What does he mean, "me first he ruined"? How did he first ruin Adam? Is there some ruin before Eve eats the apple? Or is Eve so insignificant that her eating isn't ruin, but it's all about him and how her eating ruined him? Milton could perfectly easily have made that line "Wee first..." But he didn't. It's Me. And I'm having trouble making sense of that.

He's showing the effects of the Fall: male egoism has commenced.

Everyman wrote: "Dianna wrote: "I would say his sexism is based more on the ideas of his culture."

I would agree with that. Which I think includes, or maybe it's better to say was directed by, the church's view..."

I've wondered how much his first marriage had to do with his attitudes. He an was extremely well educated genius in his 30s, she 17. What could she possibly have seemed to him, other than a child? Or, as most women weren't educated during that period, wouldn't women generally appear to him as audience for a man's greater understanding of the world? It's not surprising that some of that would reflect in his interpretation of Genesis and in PL.

Thomas wrote: "What is interesting to me is that Eve is not happy playing her designated role even before she meets Satan and takes the fruit. She is not pleased with how the garden grows "luxurious by restraint"..."

Great point Thomas!

May I stray back briefly to the question of whether Milton believed in the Trinity and therefore whether in Book I 'And chiefly thou O Spirit' was a reference to his Muse or the Holy Spirit, because Book 9 line 21 commences:

'Of my celestial Patroness who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse'

Isn't this a call to his Muse again and surely a 'celestial Patroness' isn't the Holy Spirit?

Well some do think the Holy Spirit is the "feminine" side of God but I wouldn't say that would sit well with fundamentalist patriarchists.

Laurele wrote: "I'm not so sure that Adam was present at first. Here is the King James translation of verse 6:
"

This is one of those times when we need a Hebrew (Aramaic?) scholar.

I have the recent JPS (Jewish Publication Society) translation of the Tanakh, based on the traditional Hebrew text. It reads "When the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate." The Oxford New English Bible also does not say that Adam was with her.

However, a majority of the texts, starting with the Geneva Bible from which many Bibles spring, do have the "with her" language: see
http://bible.cc/genesis/3-6.htm

Despite my love of the language of the King James Bible, my overall preference is to believe that the more modern an authoritative translation is, the more likely it is to be an accurate rendition of the text since it would normally have the benefit of more scholarship than might have been available to earlier translators, and also I think that most modern translators are less committed to incorporating their theological positions in their translations.

I would also note that Wesley's Notes (which are on the same page referenced above) say: "This she saw, that is, she perceived and understood it by what the devil had said to her. She gave also to her husband with her - 'Tis likely he was not with her when she was tempted; surely if he had, he would have interposed to prevent the sin; but he came to her when she had eaten, and was prevailed with by her to eat likewise. " Now, that's very much a comment dictated by theological belief, isn't it? But I think he also has a fair point because if Adam had been there there would certainly have been a discussion, whereas none is noted in the text. Surely if she had reached for the fruit Adam would have said something like "hold on, there, let's talk this over." But the interchange is all between Serpent and Eve.

So overall, while I am far from certain, I tend to the view that Adam wasn't there, and that Milton's having him come on the scene after the deed is done, is more likely to be the case.

Aranthe wrote: "I've wondered how much his first marriage had to do with his attitudes. He an was extremely well educated genius in his 30s, she 17. What could she possibly have seemed to him, other than a child? Or, as most women weren't educated during that period, wouldn't women generally appear to him as audience for a man's greater understanding of the world? It's not surprising that some of that would reflect in his interpretation of Genesis and in PL. "

That's a really nice point. Certainly one's life experiences merge into one's thinking.

I also think that his daughters weren't that well educated -- he seems not to have cared much for their education. So he was apparently surrounded by women who were considerably his intellectual inferiors (though it would have taken a George Eliot or Virginia Woolf to have been his intellectual equal!) But your idea does resonate with me.

Everyman wrote: Despite my love of the language of the King James Bible, my overall preference is to believe that the more modern an authoritative translation is, the more likely it is to be an accurate rendition of the text since it would normally have the benefit of more scholarship than might have been available to earlier translators, and also I think that most modern translators are less committed to incorporating their theological positions in their translations.

I disagree heartily, but I do agree with you and Wesley and Milton on his not being there at the time.

Actually, only four of the modern translations on the Biblos page give "who was with her." Eight others, along with the King James, use simply "with her."